Still eating like there's no tomorrow? A qualitative study to revisit attitudes and awareness around sustainable diets after 10 years

Abstract

There is growing realisation that changes to the food system are needed to prevent the worst scenarios for future climatic change. One of these changes is for people to consume sustainable diets, which are healthy, do not place overwhelming strain on the environment, and are culturally and socially acceptable and economically attainable. One facet of such diets is that people in countries where meat is consumed in large quantities may need to reduce their intake. A 2013/14 study suggested that people were unaware of the link between diet and climate change, the need to change diets for environmental reasons and were reluctant to reduce meat eating. We sought to investigate whether people's views on the topic had changed since then by repeating focus groups with 60 participants, revisiting the same geographic areas as the original study, and ensuring rural/urban areas and levels of deprivation remained constant. We solicited people's understanding of sustainable diets and their willingness to adopt them. We found that awareness had increased, albeit not evenly among socioeconomic groups. During the intervening period greater media coverage linking environment and food was observed. There was more apparent willingness to reduce meat consumption, but many of the perceived and experienced barriers persisted that people claimed impeded them from doing so. Acknowledging the differing experiences and perceived barriers and facilitators from different groups is necessary to create interventions that address specific obstacles, making it easier for individuals to adopt more sustainable dietary practices and ultimately contributing to achieving environmental and public health goals.